Was Hitler a Totalitarian Dictator?

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Was Hitler a Totalitarian Dictator?

A Totalitarian is a dictator which controls all the aspects of their citizens lives. In practice the term is often is used to describe a political situation where a small group of people, or one organization, has total authority over a nation.

In Hitler's Germany there were many characteristics of a Totalitarian state and a Totalitarian Dictatorship. The Government ran and censored the media. All forms of communication were liable to interference from above and could, and were, heavily censored. This removes freedom of speech, therefore enabling the government to influence popular opinion via propaganda and false news messages.

The Age of Anxiety, the age of the lost generation, was also an age in which modern Fascism and Totalitarianism made their appearance on the historical stage.

Before examining if Hitler established a totalitarian dictatorship, it is necessary to look at how Hitler, once in power, established a dictatorship. In my essay I will be examining three different methods of control, one how Hitler manipulated the law, two how Hitler used terror and three how Hitler used propaganda and persuasion.

Hitler used the law to his own advantage throughout his quest to become the Fuhrer and when he eventually became the Fuhrer. Hitler removed his opposition through the Enabling Act. The Enabling Act gave Hitler the power to make any law he wanted without needing a vote in the Reichstag. It should be remembered that governments had been ruling like this for the past three years.

Once in power he was able to exploit various situations to gradually dismantle the German democracy. Hitler had been invited into power, you must realize that he was invited into power by people that thought Hitler could be controlled, he wanted to begin to eliminate his opposition, but Germany was a democracy, he couldn't ban opposition parties outright. So he had to wait for an opportunity to do this the Reichstag fire gave him this opportunity.

On the 27th February 1933 the Reichstag building was burnt down. This specific building was a symbol of democracy. Hitler said this was a communist plot to take control. By saying this Hitler made the German people hate the communists this is called propaganda.
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Hitler had eliminated the communists but had many other party oppositions. The KPD and the SPD were both banned by Hitler and soon other parties which helped Hitler to become Chancellor wee also banned. The trade unions were very closely associated with the left wing parties and so natural opponents of the Nazis. In May all trade unions were abolished and strikes were made illegal.

This very similar to what happened to the church it opposed Hitler and was banned. When the Nazis came into power in 1933 Germans were Christians they belonged to one of the ...

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In believing that this piece of work was coursework, I find the spelling, grammar and punctuation poor. There were many cases of the lack of a comma where needed. Spelling mistakes included “Goebbles” and “rumors”. Above this, there were letters and even words missed out from sentences disrupting the fluency of the essay (for example, “I Hilter” – I believe they meant, “I think Hitler” and “wee” instead of “were”). The only technical terms that the essay required was the understanding of the words totalitarian and dictator. Both the student has attempted to define and whilst there was a confusing point made in the essay, it was generally a fair definition. The lack of fluency in the essay is typical of GCSE level essays and would be improved by a detailed plan along with reviewing the essay after writing. Surprisingly, the essay contained so many spelling, punctuation and grammatical mistakes for a piece of coursework – such issues should not be appearing in a GCSE level history essay and would, without doubt, lower the mark.

The level of explanation in relation to the points the student makes is excellent. I would avoid the words “you” and “I” in the essay, however, at GCSE level it is acceptable. Whilst many relevant points have been made, the student fails to develop their points further. This is what gains students higher marks. The further development gives more weight to their argument and makes their argument more explicit and linked to the question set. The appropriate conclusion was reached, however, due to the structure of the essay, it did not naturally flow to the conclusion. Whilst the concluding idea was apparent throughout the essay, I was not ‘expecting’ the conclusion when I reached it. This is where linking the paragraphs and then linking the paragraphs to the question set is very important. A fluent, well linked and structured essay allows the argument for the essay to be clearly defined and makes it easier for an examiner to spot. In turn, this ensures that the examiner does not have to read over a point twice to understand the relevance of it to the question. This all contributes to a higher mark being awarded.

The student gives detailed explanation to the points made throughout the essay, however they fail to explicitly link this explanation back to the question. Perhaps this is not helped by the structure of the essay. There are many paragraphs of various lengths – I particularly noticed that one paragraph was only a sentence long. In having superfluous paragraphs, the linkage between the paragraphs and hence the entire essay to the question was difficult to find. The student is on the right lines in defining what is meant by a totalitarian dictator in the introduction, but they erroneously stated that “a totalitarian is a dictator” – this is not necessarily always true. Whilst to an extent I agree to the statement made, it must be made clear in an essay (most possibly in the introduction) why it may be a convincing conclusion. Confusingly, the student defines a ‘dictatorship’ as a leader who still faces opposition whilst a ‘total dictatorship’ is a leader who faces no opposition. Personally, I would say that a dictator does not have opposition and is not restricted by laws of the state.